A continual feast.

A Continual Feast deals with the Christian year in both recipes and text, but the whole formula and approach would work for any organized religion. As a matter of fact, a friend tells me that Jewish holiday cookbooks exist and that she will show me hers the next time I see her; I hope those books are as well done as A Continual Feast.

ANOTHER INFORMATIVE and charming book deals with the most luscious cakes a cook ever made. Victorian Cakes, by Caroline B. King, has at last been re-issued as a paperback by Aris Books ($9.95), with an introduction by Jill Gardner. Subtitled A Reminiscence with Recipes, the book transports us back to the days when Womanhood in the Kitchen was in Full Flower. Mrs. King was a professional writer for the leading magazines of her time (she died in 1948). She also homesteaded in Idaho, where she taught home economics to the Nez Perce women, and became Head Army Dietician in 1917 and spent World War I in France. Mrs. Gardner, a food writer for the Chicago Tribune, rescued the book from oblivion and has provided information on the Victorian ingredients and how to make these majestic, totally delicious cakes today.

I was delighted when I rediscovered this book, which I had seen a very long time ago--it came out in 1941--and I propose to give it to all my friends who love desserts but feel, as I do, that they must be worth their calories. "If I knowed you was a-comin' I'd a' baked you a cake" is a truth I cherish, because a fine cake shows that one really cares.